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Leslie Weatherhead

81 quotes

“The idea that God’s Providence means that he looks after those who serve him by a special use of his power in terms of favoritism is an immoral idea and insulting to both man and God. No true Christian wants to opt out of the trials that beset others, and no worthy idea of God could include his establishment of a kind of insurance scheme by which, if God be worshiped, cancer, for example, could be avoided.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The eyes would soon grow dim if they had no correspondence with light. The lungs would soon perish without any correspondence with air. The mind that has no relation with truth is said to be in a state of unbalance, and the spirit too must have some traffic with God, its relevant Environment, if it is to maintain its fullest health.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must go on praying, for sometimes prayer seems so to alter mental attitudes and reinforce mental energies as to strengthen the patient’s resistance to disease and even overcome it, and in any case to sustain him in the bearing of it. But we must not lose faith when God does not answer prayer in the way we think we should if we had his power.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is so very important to remember that, while all healing is of God, we must find the answer to the question, "Which is the most relevant way of cooperating with God in the case of this particular patient? It may be surgery, or medicine, or psychiatry, or prayer. Prayer is not relevant in many cases, save as an aid to the patient’s mental condition, and God is not going to make of prayer an easy magic, just because we have not used our human resources of money and men in wiser ways.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No honest mind can exclude doubt, or ignore criticism, or shut its ears against reason. And if we could do these things we should be left, not with faith, but with a head-in-the-sand superstition.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some laymen feel that, out of loyalty, they ought to cling to ancient ways of expressing the Christian faith and that to doubt is to sin. But doubt is not the enemy of faith. It is the growing edge of faith. . .”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Behavior that was innocent and amoral on the animal level of man’s development became immoral as man moved upward on his evolutionary path, and, assisted by prophets, seers and saints, higher and higher moral peaks were discerned. When we come to Jesus, the moral demand made upon man by his new insights was impossible to reach were it not that he offered power to become and claimed himself to be the Way as well as the Goal.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He revealed what God must be like and what man may be like, and he pledged himself to stand by his little brothers until they too achieved God’s age-long purpose on this minor planet; until all the sons of men realized their possibilities and became the sons of God.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know we can go too far and try to whitewash what is plain sin; to seek to excuse really bad behavior and to account for it in terms of infantile environment, traumatic experiences, psychological complexes and the like. But I regard it as a sign of progress that we are at last doubting the value of the cane and tawse in the schoolroom and the birch and the hangman’s rope in the jails.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“. . . I believe that the annihilation of even one soul spells a defeat of God’s purposes, a denial of Christ’s teaching and a closure of heaven against those who love the lost soul.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death itself seems not to make a great difference. Certainly man’s eternal destiny is not determined by the act—often the accident—of dying. Spiritually, and apparently mentally, he goes on where he left off. . .”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that all men, whatever their religion or lack of it, pass on into another phase of being, to another class in God’s school.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death, we are told, should be left to God. We do not leave birth to God. We space births. We prevent births. We arrange births. Man should learn to become the lord of death as well as the master of birth.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith in God includes faith in those who help God.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is not one judgment day, surely, but a thousand! Every time we confront beauty, truth, goodness or love, our response to them judges us.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hell may last as long as sinful humanity lasts, but that does not mean that any individual will remain in it all that time. The time of purging can only continue until purification is reached. And a God driven to employ an endless Hell would be a God turned fiend himself, defeated in his original purpose.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No words used in the Gospels can legitimately be twisted to mean unending punishment, and indeed, such an expression is self-contradictory. The main motive of punishment surely is to reform the sufferer; in school, to make a better scholar; in the State, to make a better citizen. If the punishment goes on forever when does the sufferer benefit by the punishment or use the lesson he has learned so painfully? If Hell were endless it would be valueless.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems strange indeed that so practical and pressing a truth as that of purgatory should be dismissed, while so remote and impractical a doctrine as the absolute everlastingness of hell should be insisted on.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, the human soul will always have the power to reject God, for choice is essential to its nature, but I cannot believe that anyone will finally do this.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may take some eons, as we think of time, or even many reincarnations, but we have the highest authority for believing that the Great Shepherd himself will not be content if one of his sheep is missing from the final fold.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The life of Jesus was a translation into humanity, of the life of God, as far as man is capable of discerning the latter. In the same way, the church is not something born on earth which grew to divine proportions and significance, but a translation into terms of space and time of the divine community eternally existent in heaven.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I see it, all questions regarding the factual accuracy of Biblical statements—notably such ‘miraculous’ events as Virgin Birth, Resurrection, etc.—are wholly irrelevant to the true issues. Indeed, I should go so far as to say myself that the whole value of the Gospel story to mankind—and it is very great—lies not in its historical but in its legendary, mythical, or ‘typical’ character. It is not, I think, the Sermon on the Mount—or at least not this alone—that constitutes the peculiar contribution of Christianity to human thought, for very similar maxims are to be found elsewhere, and in any event could be deduced from first principles. It is to be found, rather, in the affirmation that all that is best and highest in man, as typified in the person of Jesus, is bound to arouse opposition, is often persecuted and apparently destroyed—yet is in fact indestructible and does perennially ‘rise again’, triumphant over seeming disaster.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Preface, p. 20, sentence 3. Quoted from Whately Carington,Telepathy, pp. 145-46 (Methuen 1945).)
“Men glibly turn to an infallible Bible, or an infallible church, or an infallible Pope, or an infallible conscience, or an infallible Christ, and say that that authority is sufficient for them and enables them to accept truth. I believe all that kind of talk is false. It is false psychology or a failure of insight, and it is the fruit of mental laziness; a refusal to think things through. The most important convictions in religion cannot really be reached on the word of another. We can assent to propositions out of laziness of thought, or a desire to please, or an inability to argue, but one of the reasons why, in a crisis, men often feel let down by their religion is that they glibly assented to this or that, and falsely called their assent ‘belief.’”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not prepared to hand over to any other person, though wise and learned, or to any institution however ancient or sure of its position, my inalienable right to search for ever-growing and ever-expanding truth. I believe the craving for security in belief is one which arises from within ourselves, and can only be met adequately from resources which are within ourselves. It seems to me that it is far more important for a soul in evolution to believe a few things because it has struggled, thought and suffered to discover and possess them, than it is for it to have a comfortable and orderly faith which it has adopted from any source outside itself.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p.58 (Dr. Raynor Johnson: A Religious Outlook for Modern Man. 1962. Hodder and Stoughton. ppp. 122-23)
“I would like to be able with authority to present the case for believing in God, but I would far rather be an authoritative argument for believing in God. The saints are the best argument for Christianity. They have the highest authority in the world for they coerce us and yet our coercion is a willing one. They drive us along the way which in our best moments we want to go. When we read their lives, and even more when we touch their lives with our own in day-to-day living, we meet Christianity’s unanswerable argument. We know, with an authority nothing can resist or overcome, that Christianity changes lives and that if Jesus Christ were given a chance he would change the world.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No doubt analytical psychologists could tear it all to bits and explain it in the jargon of this or that psychological school. Critics could trample on my dreams and say that it was too much in the realm of feeling to have any value, but so is falling in love. Is that not real, and highly significant, and life-changing? So is the state of mind induced by music, or by some of the glories of Nature, or by some of the works of man. . . All I can say is that to me it was an experience of God, never to be denied. . . No one who has had such an experience can ever doubt but that in the end good will triumph over every form of evil, and that every life, however humble, frustrated, indifferent or even careless, is in the care of this Power and within a Plan, vast beyond our power to imagine, which will work out in a blessedness which brings utter satisfaction and quality of bliss for which there are no words.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We use the word divine because the word human is not big enough. He is so much more like God than any other. But the word “divine” is really only an expression of Christian agnosticism. I am quite ready to say that I believe in the divinity of Christ, but I do not know what it means, nor can I find anyone who can explain what it means, least of all some of the theologians from Paul onwards. I sincerely believe that he is the Savior of the World, and if I am immediately challenged about what he saves men from, my answer is that he saves men from the utter despair which would fall upon a thoughtful man, who, conscious of high aims and immense possibilities within himself, was condemned to try to achieve them without any aid save his own, and purely human help of his fellows.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His death is a revelation of the nature of God, and a pledge that God will stand by me until I am made one with him. . . It was a revelation of God’s reaction to human sin. To be hurt and hindered by it, but to go on loving, and go on loving, and go on loving, without reprisal or answering violence until men see what sin is and what sin does, and turn with loathing from that which has so grievously hurt the greatest Lover of the human soul. . . It is not what God once was, or Christ once did, that can save us, but what Christ once did is the sacrament and visible pledge to us of what He is and does for ever. . . He committed himself to the task of recovering all humanity to God, however long it might take, however arduous the way, however unrewarding the toil.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us never imagine that faith can ever be furthered by suppressing doubt, let alone by suppressing evidence. All truth is one, and religion must be as eager as science to know the truth as far as man can perceive it. If something we have treasured as truth is really contradicted by unanswerable evidence, then in the name of the God of truth we must part with it however venerable it may be. Let us never suppose that we can take over faith from our parents without examination, or believe anything merely because another says it is true. But let us not be content with a static agnosticism which never rouses itself to make inquiry. Let us examine the evidence and then in complete loyalty to its trend make a leap both of intellect and will, and, committing ourselves, acting as if all were established, try out in life the faith that carries us on wings after the hard road of fact and reason stops.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“. . . I have excluded the idea of the Fall of Man. . . man has made a long climb from the status of the animal until the time when he could recognize right from wrong. That recognition, at first, was based on behavior that paid, that avoided the retribution of the tribe and the gods, and that enabled the primitive society to function. Yet, however lowly in origin—and I am referring to a period centuries before right seemed to be worth following simply because it was right, or because man’s dignity and status were sustained by doing right; centuries before right was conceived as pleasing to God because he was holy and righteous—that earliest recognition of a difference between right and wrong was an immense advance, even though wrong was chosen.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man’s tragic apostasy from God is not something which happened once for all, a long time ago. It is true in every moment of existence. . . . It involves no scientific description of absolute beginnings. Eden is on no map, and Adam’s fall fits no historical calendar. Moses is not nearer to the Fall than we are, because he lived three thousand years before our time. The Fall refers not to some datable, aboriginal calamity in the historical past of humanity, but to a dimension of human experience which is always present—namely, that we who have been created for fellowship with God repudiate it continually; and that the whole of mankind does this along with us. Every man is his own ‘Adam,’ and all men are solidarily ‘Adam.’ Thus, Paradise before the Fall, the status perfectionis, is not a period of history, but our ‘memory’ of a divinely intended quality of life, given to us along with our consciousness of guilt.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p.237 (John S. Whale: Christian Doctrine. 1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 52)